Angola's ruling MPLA obstructing independent reporting

New York, March 16, 2011--Angola's ruling MPLA government must allow the press to freely cover public events, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today after a number of recent incidents in which authorities barred journalists from covering public events related to the country's opposition party.

On Tuesday, police
officers and clerks at Angola's National Assembly arbitrarily denied reporters access
to a public hearing of the chamber's Ethics Committee, according to local
journalists. The committee was hearing testimony fromAbilio Kamala Numa, the secretary-general
of the main opposition party UNITA, who faces accusations of instigating civil
disobedience over his February hunger strike
to protest
what he called the MPLA's abuse of human rights and political freedom. Numa's
hunger strike was sparked
by the arrest of a UNITA militant in central Huambo province, according to news
reports.

Police and clerks threatened and assaulted reporter
Agostinho Gayeta from Catholic station Rádio Ecclesia, throwing him out of the
chamber, the station reported
in a broadcast of a recording
of the confrontation. His equipment was briefly seized, according to news
reports.

On February 27, state security officials prevented two
other Rádio Ecclesia reporters, Zenina Volola and
Matilde Vanda, from covering the opening of a congress of the Angolan Women's
Organization (OMA), the women's wing of the MPLA, according to local
journalists. Volala was denied access to the chamber and Vanda denied interviews,
according to Teixeira Candido, spokesman of the Syndicate of Angolan
journalists.

"Angola's ruling MPLA-led government is crudely
attempting to silence coverage of an opposition movement," said CPJ's Africa
Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita. "We call on authorities to adhere to the
Angolan constitution, which guarantees citizens' access to diverse sources of
information, not just ruling-party propaganda."

On March 7, security forces in the capital, Luanda, briefly
detained three journalists and a driver for the private weekly Novo Jornal who were covering an
anti-government demonstration in the city's Independence Square, according to news reports and local
journalists. Police detained reporters Pedro Cardoso and Ana Margoso, photojournalist
Afonso Francisco, and driver Dálio Pandé for 10 hours, interrogating them about
their links to demonstrators, and let them go without charge, the journalists
later told CPJ. Margoso told
U.S.-government-funded broadcaster Voice of America she was forced to clean the
police cell and was interrogated three times.

On March
5, state security agents raided the printing press and blocked the distribution
of that day's editions of independent weeklies Folha 8, Agora, and Jornal Angolense,
which had headlines about the protest scheduled for March, according to local
journalists.